C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL; DR
- Months ago, Google announced a full on-device search function for Android 12. Now it’s here with the fifth beta.
- The search function can be called up in the Pixel app drawer. It’s not clear where it will be on other Android skins.
- Search queries return results from all devices, including contacts, settings, apps, files, and more.
Most Android phones these days have a permanent Google search bar on the home screen. That way, you can easily find all sorts of things all over the web, just like you did with Google.com. However, it doesn’t show you results from one place you might want: the phone itself.
Google told us that a full on-device search engine would come to Android 12 at some point. Now, with the fifth beta launched today, we can finally see it.
See also: The full story of Android
On Pixel phones with Android 12 Beta 5, you can access the new search function in the app drawer. At the top of the drawer is a search bar that says “Find a phone and more” (see photo above). The results you see from this location don’t include web results, at least not by default.
It’s not clear if this will work on Android skins like One UI or Oxygen OS as well. However, it is likely that it will be similar.
This is how the device-internal search works in Android 12!
Android 12 device search
Searching with the on-device engine is very intuitive. First, make a query. As you type, you’ll see results from anywhere on your phone, including apps, files, settings, contacts, and more.
See screenshots of my search for “home” below.
As you can see, the first thing that brought it out was the Google Home app, which makes sense. Next came one of my contacts that contains the word “home”. There are two quick links to text messages that will contact you or visit the full page.
Below you will see the link “Home” in Google Maps. If you scroll further down, you’ll find Assistant Routines with the word Home, Settings for the Word Home, and more.
At the very bottom there is a link to search Google instead. This would be useful if I wanted to search the web using this search bar but was in the wrong place. Instead of going to the correct search bar, I can jump straight to Google.
If you don’t like the number of results it contains, you can always tweak it. In the Android settings there is the “Search phone” page, where you can turn search result sources on or off.
Since this is the final beta of Android 12, we don’t expect there will be too many changes to this feature until stable launch. Look forward to this new useful tool coming to your phone soon!
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